MATNEY

Listen to MATNEY’s ‘No Substitute’ Here:

A couple of years ago my late sister, God rest her soul, was online dating when she ran into this music manager. The next thing I know I’m on a plane to Florida hanging out with this Canadian blues/rock band Zedhead.

I had always had my own band and done my own thing having some success with my first solo project “White Boy And The Average Rat Band” but I decided that for the next year or two I would commit to someone else’s project. Honestly there was a quote from Deepak Chopra floating around in my head about the universe ‘giving back’ what you put out so… I’ve spent the last two years with Zedhead and I still play for them. I’ve got to travel and meet people in the industry that I would have never had the opportunity to meet before.

Meanwhile back on the ranch as they say, (I have a farm in rural Southwest, VA, I began writing songs and working on a new demo in this little recording studio I built after receiving my BA from MTSU in Recording Industry Management. After listening to tracks with a drum machine for a year I decided to go looking for a drummer which is no easy feat in this rural area. I turned to Facebook. After zeroing in on a guy from Facebook that lived in the next town over that played drums I noticed in one of his post he gave credit to another drummer he had worked with and had a lot of praise for the guy, so I simply went through that guys friend list till I found Bobby Chappell and I sent him a friend request. Wa La I had a drummer.

Bobby and I spent the next several months replacing drum machine tracks with real drums. The project started to come alive. We both knew and felt like the next stage was to bring in a bass player. Again I’ll have to reference my sister as I knew one of her old flames and an old friend of mine was a bass player. Darrell Gibson had been a bass player and was a singer in a local bands for years and I myself had shared the stage with him more than a time or two. I didn’t have to ask him twice.

After working several months with Darrell and Bobby the music began to change, it got bigger, badder, better. It was about then that I got a call from my friend in Nashville named Kriss Famous ‘the guy that got me my however brief job with David Allan Coe . Kriss said he had been playing in a great jazz band with a guy that owned a studio on music row and that he thought he may be able to get us a deal on some time there. That was perfect, as I had always wanted to record in a really ‘nice’ studio but had never had the opportunity.

Zedhead had done a video last summer. I thought that was cool and I wanted to do one too. Bluesdog Falconi plays harmonica in Zedhead and works on the show Nashville. He put me in contact with Cody Reid. We decided to shoot all the footage we could right there in the studio.

So I came to Nashville and met Jay because I wanted the best product I could get. Jay agreed to play keys on it. He is an awesome producer in the studio. Some stuff got thrown out. And we also brought Dana McVicker in. The songs took on a life of their own the whole project just sort of took off.

Jay says, “I gotta guy.” He introduced us to Kevin Mason and the next thing ya know we were all big stars and everybody got rich. THE END!